


Incidental Art

by Elektra Pendragon (elekdragon)



Category: Forbidden Game - L. J. Smith, Hellraiser (movie series)
Genre: Bondage, M/M, Mutilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-27
Updated: 2005-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-12 08:58:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/123166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elekdragon/pseuds/Elektra%20Pendragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zach finds a different way to travel between the worlds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Incidental Art

**Author's Note:**

> I was re-reading the Hellbound Heart one day when I thought that Julian's More Games shop reminded me of the places Frank used to visit. Also inspired by "Wordsworth" in the Hellraiser Collected Comics vol 1. I love the idea of tasks as well as the puzzle being the key.

"I prefer the reflection of things," he said, "to the thing itself."

 _/The thing./_ That was how Zach felt, trussed up in a complex weave of ropes and straps, suspended just a few scant centimeters from the ground--almost close enough for his toes to brush the hardwood floor. A thing to be moved, changed, admired, or dismissed at another's whim.

The flash burned horrible against his unshielded eyes, the intricate muscles of his lids spasming as they tried to close. The tape still held them securely open, though his skin shimmered liquidly. In his own mind, Zach could almost see the picture he must make, the stark contrasts of bruises to flesh, rope to leather. Shades of light, with rough strokes of grey.

The tall man had hardly seemed to see Zach at all when he had methodically started working on him, but now... now he couldn't keep his eyes off him through the single, staring, shining lens of the camera. Zach could remember that feeling, the obsession, the need for the perfect image.

Image, over reality.

Sometimes, neither were enough.

The photographs, he knew, would be perfect.

****

Zach was going to be late, his stiff joints making the long walk uncomfortable. He didn't have time to stop at home to shower and change. His muscles slowly unwound as he continued walking briskly, his muscles stretching. Idly, his hand slipped into his bag to touch a sharp edge. Excitement gave him more strength, and soon he was nearly running.

He breathlessly slid into the bench seat in the booth across from his cousin. Jenny refused to go to his apartment anymore, so Zach agreed to meet her at a local restaurant. He hadn't seen her in a long time, and was glad for the opportunity to show her his newest find.

Her eyes shocked wide open at the sight of him, as they always seemed to do nowadays, and her smile was watery and thin when she recovered. Zach smoothed a lock of hair out of his eyes and slid his fingers into his bag. The cool, sharp edge against his finger calmed him. He returned the smile only halfway, but it was warm. He was glad to see her.

"You look..." her eyes followed Zach's hand as he reached out to pull over the menu, catching on the rubbed-raw redness circling his thin wrist. "Good," she finished, but she didn't sound happy about it.

"You too," he returned. The waitress appeared magically at his elbow, looking bored as he pointed to something inexpensive at the bottom of the menu.

"So," Jenny's voice rose, determinedly perky, "how have you been? Have you sold any more prints?"

He had a gallery showing six months ago, but he wasn't sure if he ever sent her the invitation. He was well-received, by a select audience, but most of his customers were interested in more things than his photographs. "No."

Jenny paled a little, her gaze dancing between the glazed window and Zach's face. She couldn't hold his eyes. "Oh. That's... bad. Aunt Lil--"

"I'll survive."

"I didn't mean it like that. I was just going to say that she's worried about you. She just wants... we all just want to know you're okay."

"I'm fine."

"Zach..." She turned her sky blue eyes back to him, and kept them trained on his face. Her lip curled up, and her face angled away, but her eyes stayed on him, willfully. "Zach, you look--"

He pulled his hand out of the bag, and opened his palm to show his newest acquisition. Jenny's voice trailed off as the lights caught the gold filigree, painting a tattoo across her face. Her mouth pursed in an almost comical O as he held it out, balanced perfectly on his palm.

"Isn't it beautiful?" he asked, jolting her from the spell of the box.

Jenny blinked, sitting back in the booth. Her eyes skittered back to the window. "What did you have to pay for it?"

"Nothing," he said breezily. He set it on the table, and folding his hands in his lap.

Jenny scoffed.

"I'm serious. A man gave it to me."

"And what did you have to do for him?" her voice was rough, thick with emotion.

Zach smiled. "It's not always like that."

"No, it's exactly like that, Zach. I SAW you." A year ago. The guy gave Zach an ancient set of Egyptian Mehen sticks. Zach gave him a blow job. Jenny walked in on them. It was one of the more innocent things he'd done, but Jenny's face burned red from the memory. "You... Do you even look in the mirror anymore?"

"All the time." There were no mirrors in his apartment.

She lowered her voice, bending close across the table, her long hair coming to cover her face, leaving her eyes in shadow. "You're even starting to look like... _/him/_."

"Him," Zach repeated, keeping the smile out of his voice. It always came back to Him. The one none of them talked about, least of all Jenny.

"This isn't good, Zachary. Why don't you come and stay with me for a little while. It can be like the old days. You shouldn't be alone in that place."

"Indians in the creek. Tents made of blankets and chairs." Zach shook his head. "And I'm not alone. I have my games, my friends."

"It's not healthy."

"I never was into health." Zach was bored with the whole conversation. He'd heard the same words spoken about different things his entire life--his photography, his boyfriends, his moving out, his dropping out of college. His parents, his old friends, Jenny; they hung around like vultures, waiting for each of his little "experiments" to fail so they could bring him back. But he survived. And he was happy.

Zach pulled himself to his feet. He wrapped his hand around the box, sliding it off the edge and back into his bag. "Thank you for the lovely lunch, Jenny. Why don't you stop by sometime. I could show you my room."

Jenny shuddered, and somewhere far away Zach felt a faint glimmer of guilt. But she wasn't the only one haunted. He flashed a brief smile, and walked out, side-stepping the waitress on his way out.

***

CLACK! CLACK!

The heavy keychain hit the plastic bowl by the door with a loud noise, filling the small apartment with the sound of bones rattling together as the metal pieces settled. As he hurried through the room, Zach didn't spare a glance to the framed prints coating the walls, the small studio set up in the corner, the blinking light of the answering machine. He stared down at his fingers, at the object he carried like a bar of pure gold, heavy and precious in his hands. He shouldered his way through the half-closed door, the so-called bedroom, though Zach hadn't kept a bed in there since he moved in.

"The Game Room," some called it, those strange and random visitors who insisted on seeing how his mind worked. He didn't mind the name, the visits, because sometimes they left more games behind as a gift.

More Games. That was the secret name Zach used for the room. The day that Jenny said she couldn't visit anymore, couldn't stand the sight of the room, that was the day Zach knew he'd finally gotten it right.

Reality as illusion. Image into reality.

It was right, but not perfect. Not quite Unreal enough.

Zach's eyes roamed over the shelves built onto the wall, the tables taking up most of the space in the modest room. Everything was covered with games--new games, old games, video games, games carved from bones. Some more artistic than others, some more gruesome than practical. The collection had started modestly, Zach picking up random games wherever he roamed. A glass chess set from a flea market. A carved Arabic box filled with tiny scarab playing pieces from a street vender.

He'd reconstructed it all with his artist's memory, drawing details from Jenny even when she didn't want to share. The bulletin board with the small sign tacked on, a box of letters that took a moment for the mind to process.

"Welcome to my world."

Once, long ago, Zach had the opportunity to be trapped within his own mind, a world of his own making. All the things in his head, the abstract and scary, were brought to life in a cartoonish display. He'd thought he'd finally gone insane, but he instead he found that there were places the mind and body could travel and still remain horrifyingly sane.

Ever since that day, his photographs were colorless, empty, and without meaning. What was his ideas compared to a world of image made flesh? At first, the thought frightened him, enough that he put down his camera and sought inspiration in the outside world. And, as always, the outside world failed him.

The first game was in an antique shop his mother dragged him to. She wanted help carrying a desk, and his father was at work. It had rested, gleaming and tired, on a too-modern tray, its gilt corners worn thin and silvery. He'd bought it on the spot. He could almost hear Jenny's voice recount strange encounters with the Shadow Man, describing a box here, a game there.

 _/You are all the innocent little goats.. and I'm the tiger./_

Zach had stared at the game the whole night, waiting for whatever magic it held to come to him. At one point, he reached out, caressing the edge, feeling where the tiny nails bit into metal, when one reached out and bit him too. His blood had fallen on the gameboard, dribbling into a peghole, as though into a mouth. He'd taken out his camera, and showed Jenny his work the next day.

Jenny was always his compass, telling him with a look or a shudder just how close he was to finding the key. Reality into image, drawn out on shadows in paper.

He was so close.

Zach's fingers slipped and tickled across the box's carvings as he sank to the floor, crossing his legs beneath him. He'd played all sorts of games--both mundane and those of a more fleshy sort--and solved all manner of puzzles in his quest for understanding. At first glance, this one seemed no different. Beautiful, yes, but with all puzzles there'd be a simple trick, a rush of insight that'd solve it for him like the rush of orgasm. And with that release, he'd find himself disappointed.

And yet, there was something more about this box. He'd sought it simply for the mystery of its telling, the delicate tales picked apart and re-sown by different tellers. It was a gateway to hell. It was a music box of such clever invention men go mad trying to open it. People died for the box. People killed for it.

All things ancient held mysteries. In his collection, Zach held many such items carrying curses and stories, none of which seem to come to life for him. It always led to disappointment, and hunger.

And yet... and yet...

Idle hands, his mother used to say, are the devil's playground. It was as though Zach was watching someone else move his hands, his fingers skating over the designs, tracing them, circling them, until something clicked and gave way.

One piece slid out, ticking softly as a tune began to play. It moved smoothly under his fingers, rearranging to reveal the gleaming of its innards. Suddenly, he could understand how those who whisper of the box worshipped it.

Tangentially, Zach was aware that he stank of sex and sweat, leather and street, still sticky and sore from the sordid tasks he'd performed to win this remarkable toy. But there didn't seem to be any time to properly prepare himself now for whatever mysteries he was about to solve. Already, more of the box was coming undone beneath his fingers, edges curling like skin under a knife.

Perhaps his defiled state was the proper obeisance to such a mystery.

The music built upon itself, weaving a wordless tune undercut by a solid tolling that grew louder with every touch, every configuration teased from the unmaking of the box. The room seemed to darken, recede around him as he worked, his eyes and attention drawn solely to the shadows and altered reflections revealed by the structure of the box. The tolling grew louder over the music of its destruction, until Zach's heart beat with it.

When the lights went out, when the sound stopped, so did Zach's heart.

Sometimes, when Zach was being whipped, or cut, or tortured in the various ways his clients found to delight themselves, he'd drift to another place, see shapes move in the walls and hear noises that had nothing to do with the grunts and pants of the men around him. It would often be brief, this glimpse of luminescence, disappearing with a breath or a blink.

Zach breathed. He blinked. He looked around, and yet the vision stayed. The walls, darkened by shadows, were outlined in light, shifting without moving, showing shimmering things beyond that flowed like blood from a wound. The harder he stared, the more they blurred beyond his seeing, inconsequential images that left nothing but a taste of something elsewhere on his eyes.

"Can I help you?"

The voice, silk-soft, came from right behind him. Zach turned without standing, looking over his shoulder with such slowness, he felt as though he'd entered a dream. The impossible blue eyes that stared back at him helped with that feeling, keeping all surprise and nervousness away. He faced the Shadowman as calmly as he faced a razor's edge.

"What?"

"Can I help you?" he repeated indifferently, his icy-white skin and hair glowing in the darkness. He was paler than Zach remembered, soft like powder in the wind drawing the shape of a man.

"You're dead," he said by way of an answer, his own voice eerily calm even to his own hearing. "They cut out your name."

"You thought--what? That I went into a beautiful dream. You know better than that, Zachary." Julian smiled a slow, toe-curlingly beautiful smile. "Good boys go to heaven. Bad boys go to hell."

"I thought the Shadow World was hell."

"Oh, no. There are worse places in and around the worlds than the Shadow World. Much worse. There are lands beyond the walls that weep bloody tears at the thought of their own existence."

Zach found it hard to follow Julian's speech, his mind slick as the softly spoken words spilled over his thoughts. Other worlds, other places--other realities. THAT'S what stuck. "There's more?"

"Yes. So much more. I have such sights to show you..." The tips of his fingers were cut flat away, smooth incisions that peeled back the flesh, making the tips of bone into natural claws. He reached out with the ruin of his perfect hand, and smiled with such hunger that Zach felt an answering tug at the corner of his mouth. Perhaps he was a little hungry too.

The claws touched the edge of his cheek, the corner of his eye, a touch so slight it didn't wake him from his dream. "I knew you'd find your way back to me. I could feel it, beyond the veils."

"Yes," Zach whispered.

The bones of Julian's fingers clicked together as they cupped his chin, pulling upwards with such strength and command that he had to obey. He rose to his feet, perhaps with less grace than he'd meant, but Julian didn't seem to mind. He released Zach the moment he was standing, leaving him swaying as he stepped away.

Julian's taste for black leather seemed to follow him to this new life; the black vest pulled tight across his chest, hugging to his skin like tattoo, leaving his well-shaped arms bare. The leather flowed smoothly into matching pants that bathed him in darkness, leaving just the shimmering of his bare skin to separate him from the shadows around them.

"Follow me," he said, though Zach hardly needed the command. He took a step forward, showing his willingness. Julian smiled again, then turned away, holding Zach's eyes until the last possible moment. Zach's gaze, torn from the sight of those morning sky eyes, slowly skimmed down the slim line of his neck, to the swell of shoulder and down to where the dark-tanned flesh of his vest met metal hooks and riven skin. Julian's back was flayed open the full length of his spine, the red-seeping wound held butterfly open by silver hooks sewing skin to leather. The pearls of his vertebrae shifted with his steps, the spines of muscle stretching against the pull of the hooks.

Zach followed, unable to resist the stark beauty hidden beneath this delicate mutilation, the mysteries he could read in the lines of sinew and muscle. So entranced, he didn't notice the open door until Julian turned again, hooded eyes teasing.

A part of him was still aware enough to know the layout of the room he himself had designed, that there had been no door there in any plans. It burned like a jagged mark in the night, cutting through the charcoal sketch of game shelves and other toys.

"Leave the box."

Zach looked down, forgetting the puzzle he'd been solving. It had remade itself in his palm while he'd been distracted by Julian's return, resting cool and whole against his skin. His hand spasmed, dropping it to the floor with a muted sigh of noise. It dimmed in the shadows, becoming more a sketch against the indistinct pattern of the floor, another unreal element in this now hyper-real world.

Julian beckoned, holding out his hands. In one he held a cutting implement of some kind--long, curved, serrated. It was like a miniature, squished scythe or a flattened, elongated hook, only the inner curve was jagged like broken glass. It fitted his hand perfectly, his long fingers flowing up the dark blade like splashes of semen. Without hesitation, Zach followed, stepping through the gash and into Julian's arms.


End file.
